How to make peace with the forest: development and war in Colombia

This
launches a series of articles looking at the relationship between environmental
and human rights, to unpack one of the world’s longest-running wars, the Peace
Agreement and its seeming collapse. Español

Screenshot / Fair use.On
September 26, the Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the
FARC-EP was signed with a pen made from a bullet, while the Air Force
“fumigated” the colours of the Colombian flag over a crowd all clad in white.
These planes are all too similar – if not the same – to the ones that up until
very recently sprayed down chemical herbicides over vast areas of the Colombian
countryside.

Six
days later, in a referendum designed by the Santos administration to be the
final form of approval for the agreement, 51.2 per cent out of the Colombians
who turned out to vote, a mere 38 per cent, issued a ‘NO’ to the agreement. The
difference was 55,651
votes.

The
divisions that have separated the ‘no’ from the ‘yes’ are much deeper than the
current Uribe vs. Santos model that the media is now spinning. In fact
politically, ex-president Alvaro Uribe and the current, Juan Manuel
Santos, who was Uribe’s minister of war during his presidency, are not actually
that different.

But
the fractures in Colombian society are historically entrenched. Since its
independence and the formation of the modern state, Colombia has had six civil
wars largely caused by divisions along class lines and political ideology. In
particular, around land ownership. What the
referendum has made increasingly obvious is that these divisions – at the same time geographical, ecological and
social – cannot be repaired by a closed Peace Process between the government
and a single armed group, a process by definition excluding the participation
of wider civil society.

Bullets and toxins

Now,
with the country gripped by mass
protests, there is a great uncertainty over the fate of the Peace
Accords – a 297-page document that has taken four years to draw up. But amidst
the confusion, devastation, anger and – for certain individuals – joy, it is
worth thinking about something that has not
changed, despite the referendum result: the critical role of the environment in
the Colombian conflict, in which bullets and toxins are the weapons.

This
series of articles will look at the relation between environmental and human
rights in order to unpack one of the world’s longest running wars, the Peace
Agreement and its seeming collapse.

The Accords, and their
proposed reforms, had the potential to open up the debate around the structural
issues behind the war, in particular, agrarian reform and economic development.
Originally a campesino organisation, the FARC-EP has had agrarian reform as
their main pillar since their foundation in 1964: the first chapter of the
Peace Accords focuses on this. Paradoxically however, while debating issues directly
intertwined with economics, such as rural reform, the negotiations were not
allowed to address the current Colombian ‘economic model’. Germán Vélez, director of Grupo Semillas
– an agricultural and environmental rights organisation, explains, “Santos made clear from the beginning that anything was up
for discussion, except the economic model. So, I believe we have to recognise
our starting point as a place where the topic of structural problems in rural
areas is not being discussed in depth.” “Santos made clear from the beginning
that anything was up for discussion, except the economic model.”

A
major criticism of the accords has been their inability to address the
structural problems of the conflict. If Colombia is to ever achieve a real,
meaningful peace, economic development and its role in fuelling much of the
violence in the countryside needs to be recognised. A very clear, direct
example of this has been the contracting of paramilitary groups by
multinational companies to “provide security” for their extractive industries.
These often involves the intimidation, kidnapping, torture, and in some cases,
the assassination of union leaders and environmental
rights advocates.

The
gap between the economic vision of the government and that of Colombian social
movements can be seen as a clash of different visions of the Colombian
territory itself, where according to the national development plan, nature
poses as an infinite resource that can be dug up, cut down, harvested, shipped
off or burnt as fuel without caution or end in sight. Biodiversity in this
long-standing model is seen solely as potential capital, yet
another mode of investment opportunity. On the other side,
indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and campesino
groups insist that this model of development does not include them, their
world-vision or their beliefs. Therefore the fight for the environment is seen
by these groups as an existential struggle. Which is why many different social movements, such as the Liberation
of Mother Earth in northern Cauca, assert their collective and cultural
rights through the preservation of biodiversity and traditional agricultural
techniques.

Window of opportunity

For movements like
these, the Peace Agreement presented a window of opportunity, held narrowly
ajar, giving the public the chance to reshape regional policies, such as those
concerning economic development.

But now that the
agreement has been rejected, that opportunity, however slight, appears to be
closing. In the ensuing political uncertainty it is likely that the debate
about the environment will take a backseat as everyone turns to the issues of
impunity and accountability. High-level, systemic impunity has been an on-going
feature of Colombian politics for some time now. Many supporters of the ‘No’
vote were against the degree of legal immunity that would be granted to the
officers and foot soldiers of the FARC, while many high level government
officials and those involved in paramilitary groups have enjoyed real impunity for decades. But the referendum results don’t
change the fact that the natural environment and those who depend on it for
survival are the primary victims of this pervasive and systemic impunity in
Colombia. The natural
environment and those who depend on it for survival are the primary victims of
this pervasive and systemic impunity in Colombia.

Throughout the war, the environment
has been a victim of the activities of both the state and the various armed
groups, perpetuating both legal and illegal economies. A very clear example of
this dual illegal/legal destruction is the case of gold mining, where illegal
gold mining has often paved the way for legal forms of extraction –
contaminating local environments to such an extent that no other activity is
possible, as can be witnessed in Chocó, a region on the Pacific northwest
coast, now experiencing mass environmental devastation due to mercury poisoning
from illegal
gold mining.

Development
as displacement

Illegal gold mine in northern Cauca, Photo: Juan Gabriel Salazar Gaviria. All rights reserved.The legal experts working in the
environmental rights and advocacy organisation Tierra
Digna see this pattern emerge in their work with communities facing
displacement due to large-scale industrial projects. Take Cesar, a department
in the north bordering Venezuela with the most coal mining in the country, whose
community arrived there at the turn of the century and has lived and worked
throughout the intrusion of cotton and palm industries. However when the coalmine
moved into the area about 25 years ago, life started to become impossible.

No one bothered to calculate the
toxins that would be released into the air and water over time, so after two
decades of operation, the soil is infertile and the air and water toxic. The
government is using the legal framework of human rights to force displace the
community, claiming that it is in their best interest to move in order to
protect their health, and claiming that the environment is no longer fit for
human life.

Developmental activities have thus far been sustained by the
forced displacement of over 6 million
people. Developmental activities have thus far been sustained by the
forced displacement of over 6 million people.

Mass displacement in rural areas has permitted the concentration
of land in fewer and fewer hands. This model of concentration via land-grab
underpins the whole economic model, allowing the creation of extensive zones
for cattle ranching, monoculture, and mining.

Another devastating environmental impact of the war has been the
aerial fumigation of coca, marijuana, and poppy crops with the herbicide glyphosate
– classified as a probable carcinogen by the World
Health Organisation – on about 1.75
million hectares of Colombian “wilderness” – in fact areas both
lived and cultivated.

Other impacts of drug eradication include increased deforestation
to create new areas of cultivation for illicit crops. Aerial fumigation has
also led to yet more forced displacement, as crops die, land becomes infertile
and families and communities can no longer survive. The land affected often
has a specific pattern of post-abandonment occupancy, and in most cases it is
ultimately taken over by large-landowning individuals, sometimes associated
with paramilitary groups who then sell it on to extractive
industries.
It is ultimately taken over by
large-landowning individuals, sometimes associated with paramilitary groups who
then sell it on to extractive industries.

Worrying post-accords scenarios

Of course there were already concerns for a “post-accords”
scenario, namely the potential rise of violence in areas previously controlled
by the FARC.

In these zones the potential for other armed groups to move in and
cause further environmental damage through drug trafficking and illegal mining
are incredibly high, not to mention the danger this poses to communities in
these areas.

And when legal industries such as mining or oil companies enter,
under the legal frame, the environmental destruction will be significantly
worse. This process
has already begun with the expansion of the petroleum and hydrocarbon
industries in the department of Caquetá after the FARC left certain areas.
The president of Ecopetrol, one of the
world’s largest petroleum companies stated
explicitly that “Peace
will allow us to take more oil from areas previously closed by conflict.”

Vélez
echoes this concern in relation to the expansion of ZIDRES,
or Zones of Interest for Economic and Social Rural Development, a plan that
renders all ‘unoccupied’ or ‘uncultivated’ land as national property that can then
be sold on to multinationals: “what the
government is looking toward is how to bring investors to rural areas, so the
land will end up in the hands of foreign investors and then our land is once
again in the hands of few. There is going to be a new concentration of land.” “There is going to be a new concentration of land.”

Fumigated field in Putumayo. Photo: Author’s own.In the wake of the
referendum, the question of the environment remains fundamental, even more so
considering the new interests and actors that have grabbed a seat at the
negotiating table alongside the leaders of the “NO” vote. This has shifted the peace process to what civil society is calling ‘a
pact between elites’ seeking to impose certain revisions on the
accords.

The proposals coming
from the far right (aligned with Uribe) would be devastating to the involvement
of social movements in environmental issues.

Uribe’s contribution

Uribe’s proposed “revisions” to the accords, for example, suggest taking away the right of the
public to challenge development projects happening near their communities,
known as the consulta popular. This right has already
come under attack. In the days following the referendum, a consulta
popular in Ibagué, a city
located in the department of Tolima, was cancelled and activists continue to
receive death
threats. The Accords offered the potential for citizen
participation. Now that any such progress has been thrown off course
(temporarily or permanently we are still to see) the far right is doing
everything it can to ensure that communities cannot stop destructive regional
development plans.

The coming months will be crucial. As the government begins its
negotiations with the other major guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army
(the ELN in its Spanish acronym), and the media shifts its focus, it will be
very telling to look at the pattern of land grabs, forced displacement, and activists
targeted. It will be very
telling to look at the pattern of land grabs, forced displacement, and activists targeted.

So often in the past these attacks have increased during times of
‘political uncertainty’. Between the agreement in late August and the final
signing of the peace accords in September 13 activists and social movement
leaders were killed, with right-wing paramilitary groups as suspects. According to a report by Somos
Defensores “the majority of the cases of aggressions against human
rights defenders in the first half of 2016 are suspected to be perpetrated by
paramilitary forces, followed by the state, and lastly the two guerrillas.” In
particular, incidences of aggression from state security forces have doubled
since 2015.

Peace and truth

‘Peace’ must be seen as
synonymous with social and environmental justice. Before the referendum, a
coalition of different social and environmental movements was calling for an environmental
truth commission. Its purpose would be to examine the long-term
devastation of water resources, biodiversity and ecosystems as a symptom of the
war, and thus a key point to address in the road to peace.

Recognising the ways in
which the violence of the war has impacted the natural environment means that
we can also start to see many different sectors of society, including
Afro-Colombians, indigenous peoples and farmers as victims of development
caught in the crossfire. Acknowledging
such diverse groups as victims of a form of development perpetuated by war is
the first step to remaking the economic model that was marked as off limits in
the peace negotiations.

But this vision of peace
– a peace made with the forest - is not the vision of the government. The following articles will examine how
social movements are challenging this perspective – from water, soil, and air –
asserting that the environment has always been at the heart of the Colombian
conflict, and that the future of ‘peace’ in the country depends very much on it
remaining a core issue in the debate.

(Next up: Journalist
Gina Spigarelli explores the struggles over water resources in the department
of Antioquia... )

About the author

Hannah Meszaros Martin is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work focuses on the broader ecological and social effects of aerial fumigation in Colombia.

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